Future of Mendon’s Nursery still undecided

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John Mendon (left) talks Wednesday with his insurance adjuster, James Boles of Nationwide, in the ruins of Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise. Mendon is unsure whether he’ll reopen the iconic ridge business. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

What used to be racks of plants for sale at Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise are just baked balls of soil wrapped bits of melted plastic pots, and fallen metal supports. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

A number of plants at Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise survived the Camp Fire, like these lying under a partly melted shade structure. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

The store and old house that stood at Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise burned to the ground Nov. 8 as the Camp Fire came to town. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

John Mendon stands near a load of living Christmas trees and other plants that arrived at Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise on Nov. 8 just before the Camp Fire swept through town. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

John Mendon looks Wednesday at a huge sego palm that had the wooden box around its roots burned away by the Camp Fire. Despite the plant’s appearance, Mendon thinks it might survive. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

The sign survived, more or less, but six-packs of plants that were on sale Nov. 8 at Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise were reduced to blackened clumps of soil. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

The Camp Fire burned the wheels off several of the carts used to haul plants around at Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

The mailbox for Mendon’s Nursery was a Camp Fire victim, as was the business’ sign. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

A bit of statuary in planted bowl survived the Camp Fire at Mendon’s Nursery in Paradise, but the plants didn’t. (Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

PARADISE — John Mendon led the way Wednesday through his family’s iconic Paradise nursery, to the plant delivery that arrived on the morning of Nov. 8: living Christmas trees, unburned, still resting on their pallets.

He said the nursery doesn’t sell a lot of the living trees, because many varieties aren’t suited to the climate and there’s the problem of where to plant one once the season’s over. The trees get big.

But they sell a few, so he stocked up.

“Now I have the trees,” he said, “but I don’t have any customers.”

And it’s an open question of whether Mendon’s Nursery will ever have any more customers, because he’s not sure if the nursery will reopen.

Nov. 8

On the morning the Camp Fire broke out, John and his son Brad went to work early to help unload the first of two trucks due to deliver plants that day.

They watched the sky turn dark as a strong wind blew in smoke from the glow rising in the northeast. They could hear propane tanks exploding in the distance.

John Mendon said there were no flames visible when he drove the nursery’s dump truck, tractor and forklift into the center of the compound, hoping the seas of gravel upon which the plants rest would protect them. Then they convinced a reluctant neighbor to flee as well, and headed out into the gridlock of cars fleeing Paradise.

The drive home to Orland took more than four hours.

Aftermath

Since the fire, they’ve been able to get back in occasionally to water the plants. The dump truck, tractor and forklift are all safe, but all the buildings are gone except for the greenhouse. The store is gone, along with the old house on the property, the shops and sheds, the warehouses and garages.

The reluctant neighbor’s house was gone as well, as is all but a single house along that stretch of Foster Road.

The greenhouse may have survived because of the moisture in it. A sign at the door calls it the “Jungle Room,” and it’s home to exotic plants and house plants. If you were to enter it in the summer, the humidity would swat you.

Many of the plants outdoors seem to have survived. Shade sails over the racks six-packs of garden plants are partially melted, but many of the trays of plants look fine, full arrays of seemingly healthy succulents and cool-season annuals. Elsewhere are rows of shrubs that again, seem to look fine.

Others, however, are gone. In places where you can tell there were racks of plants, there are just metal frames, burned wood, and baked earthen chunks that were root balls before the plastic pots around them melted away.

“It looks worse every time I come up here,” Mendon said.

Mendon said the first time he got back to the nursery, he thought 60 percent of the plants might have survived. But the number goes down with each visit. “I think I’m down to 40 percent and I think it will get lower. A lot of things, it takes until springtime before you know.” Many of the deciduous plants are dormant now, and it’s hard to tell if they’re dead or just sleeping.

There are plants that seem OK, but might not be. Mendon said two pines ordered for a project in Oroville were on the truck that was unloaded Nov. 8, and they seemed on first glance to be fine, although they were singed on one side. Upon each return they looked worse and he finally called his customer that they weren’t good enough to sell to him.

Still, there’s a huge sego palm that had the wooden box around it’s base burn away, and although it looks scorched, he thinks it will survive.

It’s a business that requires patience, and a long-range view.

The future

Asked if he will reopen, he said, “I haven’t decided 100 percent,” and you can tell that’s the honest truth.

“There’s a lot of different opinions about how many years it will take for the economy to bounce back.” And the nursery business isn’t “essential,” he points out, like a supermarket or a gas station.

Still, with everyone’s landscape scorched, he acknowledges there’s going to be a demand for his products. He offers the business opportunity to every customer who insists he has to reopen.

Then there’s things like roses. Mendon’s has — or had —the best assortment, period. People traveled for miles to buy them there.

“I didn’t really realize that,” he said. “That was my father’s baby. It wasn’t until he died a couple of years ago that I learned not a lot of other nurseries have many roses.”

There is no urgency for him to decide however. The Mendons moved to the property in 1970 and John’s father Jerry opened the nursery three years later. The mortgage is paid off and there’s no bank barking at them to make a decision on their future. And many of the plants are dormant, and less demanding of attention.

“I’ve got time to think it through.”

“It may take some years, but Paradise is going to end up being as beautiful as it was,” he said. “People should hang on to the memories of what Paradise was and will be again.”

Steve Schoonover is the city editor of the Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register. A resident of Chico since 1963 and a 1975 graduate of Chico State University, he has been with the E-R since 1980.